Four visiting poets present 'Mosaic Realities' during readings Oct. 23-24

Yamada

Woody

Cervantes

Derricotte

Four nationally recognized poets of color will be at Cornell and in the Ithaca community Oct. 23-24 for a poetry symposium titled "Mosaic Realities: Peaces of Resistance."

Mitsuye Yomada, a Japanese-American poet, will read Friday, Oct. 23, at Cornell's Noyes Center, 9:30 a.m.-noon. Elizabeth Woody, a Native-American poet and artist, will read Oct. 23 at Noyes Center, 2-4 p.m. Lorna Dee Cervantes, a Chicana poet, will read Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Bookery in downtown Ithaca, 2-4 p.m. And Toi Derricotte, an African-American poet and essayist, will read Oct. 24 at the Bookery, 6:30-8:30 p.m.

There will be a reception for the four visiting poets and an open reading for poets from the community on Oct. 23 at Noyes Center, 8:30-11 p.m.

The symposium, organizers say, aims to foster conversation about art, activism and multiculturalism between these poets and the Ithaca community through readings, interviews and open question periods.

Yamada was born in Kyushu, Japan, and spent most of her formative years in Seattle, Wash., until a few months after the outbreak of World War II, when her family was removed to a concentration camp in Idaho. Her poems Camp Notes and Other Poems, first published in 1976, recount this experience. She is the author of two books of poetry and short stories, Camp Notes (Kitchen Table; Women of Color Press, 1992 reissue) and Desert Run; Poems and Stories (Kitchen Table, 1988), and her poetry, essays and short stories have been widely anthologized. She also is the co-editor of two anthologies, The Webs We Weave; Orange Country Poetry Anthology (1986) and Sowing Ti Leaves; Writing by Multi-Cultural Women (1990). Her poems and essays have been translated into Japanese by Tokyo poet Shima Yoko and her short stories by Professor Hihar Mie of Kyoto and have appeared in Japanese literary magazines over the past years.

Woody has worked in various programs, teaching workshops, mentoring as well as giving presentations and lectures throughout the country. She is a board member of Soapstone Inc., an organization dedicated to providing a writing retreat for women, a founding member of the Northwest Native American Writers Association and a nationally elected caucus member for Wordcraft Circle: Native Writers and Storytellers. She has had her art exhibited regionally and nationally and she is the recipient of several awards and fellowships for her writing, including the American Book Award in 1990 for her collection of prose and poetry Seven Hands, Seven Hearts (first published as Hand into Stone), and the "Medicine Pathways for the Future" Fellowship/Kellogg Fellowship from the Americans for Indian Opportunity in 1993.

Cervantes is the author of two collections of poetry, Emplumada (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981), winner of the American Book Award, and From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991), winner of the Paterson Prize for Poetry and the Latino Literature Award. She also is the recipient of a prestigious Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers Award, two fellowship grants for poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as many other grants and awards. Her poetry has appeared in over 130 anthologies, including The Norton Anthology of American Literature and The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, and last year she was one of two finalists for the title of poet laureate of Colorado. Cervantes is an associate professor in the English department at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Derricotte has published four collections of poetry, Natural Birth (Crossing Press), The Empress of the Death House (Lotus Press), Captivity (University of Pittsburgh Press) and, most recently, Tender (University of Pittsburgh Press), and a literary memoir The Black Notebooks (W.W. Norton & Co. 1997), and her work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Among her many honors and awards, she is the recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1985 and 1990), the Pioneering in the Arts Award from United Black Artists Inc. (1993), a Pushcart Prize (1989) and the Folger Shakespeare Library Poetry Book Award (1990). In
1996 she founded, with Cornelius Eady, Cave Canem, a workshop retreat for African-American poets. She is a professor in the English department at the University of Pittsburgh.

The "Mosaic Realities: Peaces of Resistance" symposium is sponsored by the Cornell Department of English. For more information, call 255-6661.